Chemistry

I was appointed as a Lecturer in Chemistry at Keele in April 2008.  I obtained my MChem degree in 2001 from the University of St Andrews and remained there for my PhD (2004) under the supervision of Prof. Russell Morris, thesis “Silsesquioxane Dendrimers as Catalysts: Synthesis and Molecular Modelling”.  I then moved to the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Pharmaceutical Sciences, and in 2006 was awarded a CIHR-RxD Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Pharmacy working on “Dendrimers and Hyperbranched Polymers for the Delivery of Organometallic Anticancer Drugs”.

My research falls into the broad field of materials chemistry, specifically the interactions between metal ions and dendrimers or hyperbranched polymers.  These systems are useful for environmental applications like the remediation of heavy metal pollution from ground water, or medicinal applications involving the use of biodegradable polymers to deliver organometallic anticancer drugs such as cisplatin.   I am particularly interested in the synthesis of new dendrimers and hyperbranched polymers with polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane cores.  These are cubic molecules with corner silicon atoms and bridging oxygen atoms to which 8 branches can be attached, leading to a higher density of terminal and internal ligand groups in fewer reactive steps.

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